Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
DOI 10.1007/s11947-012-0821-x
REVIEW PAPER
Principles and Applications of Light Backscattering Imaging
in Quality Evaluation of Agro-food Products: a Review
Kaveh Mollazade & Mahmoud Omid &
Fardin Akhlaghian Tab & Sayed Saeid Mohtasebi
Received: 27 October 2011 / Accepted: 28 February 2012 / Published online: 14 March 2012
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract In recent years, due to the increasing consciousness
of quality in the food and health sector, much progress has
been made in developing non-invasive techniques for the
evaluation or inspection of internal qualitative parameters of
fruits, vegetables, and processed foodstuffs considering, e.g.,
moisture content, soluble solid content, acidity, and mechan-
ical properties. This paper reviews the theoretical and techni-
cal principles as well as the recent achievements and
applications of light backscattering imaging for nondestruc-
tive evaluation of food and agricultural produce. The results
suggest the potential use of this emerging technique in the
food industry. Further attempts are pointed out to improve its
performance through utilizing advanced image processing
coupled with artificial intelligence techniques.
Keywords Horticultural products . Hyperspectral imaging .
Image processing . Laser diode . Light propagation . Quality
control
Introduction
Technological advancement is progressively finding its
applications in agro-food industry to meet the need of the
K. Mollazade (*) : M. Omid : S. S. Mohtasebi
Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering,
Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology,
University of Tehran,
P.O. Box 4111, Karaj 31587-77871, Iran
e-mail: mollazade@ut.ac.ir
F. A. Tab
Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
University of Kurdistan,
Sanandaj, Iran
growing population. The considerable demand for agricultur-
al and food products derive us to adapt modern and automated
technologies in order to reduce waste and increase the amount
and quality of products. Furthermore, in the last decades,
because of increasing rate of international trade, there has
been a considerable growth in trade of agricultural and food
products among countries. Most countries imposed high-level
standards for quality and safety of imported products.
Therefore, exporters have to develop their postharvest tech-
nologies in order to be able to meet such standards and
challenge with their rivals and to have higher amount of
export. On the other hand, the agricultural market is very
selective and consumers want high-quality products.
Accordingly, producers have to investigate carefully the qual-
ity of their products at all stages of production, warehousing,
processing, and transportation. This requires rapid, accurate,
and inexpensive methods for assessment of the quality and
physiological status of produce (Moghimi et al. 2008).
Quality of agricultural and food products is a combination
of characteristics and traits that are important and creates the
acceptability. Acceptability in turn depends on the human
factors, including vision, touch, smell, taste, and even the
sound. Various factors are used to investigate the quality of
products. Appearance, flavor, texture, nutritional content, and
defects are known generally as the most five important factors
in evaluation the quality of fruits and vegetables (Choi et al.
2006). In overall, the quality can be classified as external and
internal. Several reference methods for inspection of internal
qualitative factors of products have been developed. However,
because of their main drawback, i.e., their invasive and de-
structive behavior, efforts are being geared up toward the
replacement of these methods with nondestructive ones.
Because of structural complexity of products, scientists
have not yet succeeded to introduce a rapid, precise, and
inexpensive method to evaluate the internal quality
1466 Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485

properties. Several nondestructive quality evaluation meth-
ods have been developed to this date. Each method is based
on measuring a given engineering property (mechanical,
optical, vibrational, electrical, acoustic, etc.) of product
(Table 1). The effectiveness of these techniques depends
on the correlation between the measured engineering prop-
erty and quality factor of interest such as moisture content
(MC), acidity, soluble solid content (SSC), protein, color,
etc. (Irtwange 2006; Choi et al. 2006).
Machine vision, spectroscopy, and imaging spectros-
copy are potential fields of research utilizing optical
properties of objects to study the internal qualitative
factors. Most of the optical techniques are costly expen-
sive in nature. Despite of this drawback, the advantages
over other non-invasive techniques mean its expansion
into various applications. Over the past two decades,
near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has been intensively
developed for investigating the internal qualitative fac-
tors of agricultural products (Zude 2009). Due to the
overlapping of the vibrational bands of water with other
constituents such as sugar and fat, conventional NIR
spectroscopy has not to reply on chemometric methods
to establish empirical relationships between NIR spectra
and the chemical constituents or quality attributes of
food and agricultural products. Since most of these
products are turbid or opaque in nature, light attenuation
in such highly scattering media can no longer be ade-
quately described by the Beer–Lambert law, which is
the basis for the NIR chemometric approach (Qin 2007).
Hyperspectral imaging is another optical technique that
has received much attention as a smart and promising
tool in the fields of food processing and inspection.
Although some advantages of this technique, like its
ability to characterize the inherent chemical properties
of a sample, have led researchers to use it in various
applications, it is still being developed to be accepted as
a preferable nondestructive tool in identifying qualitative
parameters of agro-food materials (Sun 2010).
Recent researches in machine vision is being concen-
trated more toward the ranges of light spectrum that are
invisible to the human eye (Lorente et al. 2012). Light
backscattering imaging (LBI) is a developing technique,
which uses principles of light backscattering and image
processing in visible (VIS) and shortwave near infrared
(SWNIR) range of light spectrum (Qing et al. 2007a,
2008).
In this paper, we review the theoretical and technical prin-
ciples of LBI as a newly and in progress technique.
Furthermore, applications of LBI technique and recent
achievements in agriculture and food industry are discussed.
In the final section, we highlight drawbacks and give some
suggestions for advancing this technique in the future works.
Concept of Light Backscattering
Based on optical properties, an object may be pellucid, semi-
pellucid, or turbid. Agricultural products are supposed to be
semi-pellucid or turbid and transmit the light through them-
selves at certain wavelengths (Mireei 2010). Reflectance,
absorption, and transmittance may occur when light, or elec-
tromagnetic radiation in general, interacts with the turbid
biological tissue (Qin 2007). Light reflectance is a complex
phenomenon and is shown in three formats: regular (specular)
reflectance, external diffuse reflectance, and scattering (see
Fig. 1).
In general, the light reflection from a polished surface is
called regular reflectance. The general rule about this type of
reflection states that the light incident angle with the object
surface is equal with the angle at which it is reflected, while
external diffuse reflectance is occurred at a 45° angle to the
incident beam. This reflectance carries some information

Table 1 Nondestructive meth-

ods developed for inspecting
internal quality of agro-food
produce (reprinted from
Choi et al. 2006)
Methodology Technique being used Components
Optics Image analysis Size, shape, color, external defects
Reflectance, transmittance, and Internal components, color, defects
absorbance spectroscopy
Laser spectroscopy Firmness, viscoelasticity, defects, shape
X-ray Array image and CT Internal cavity and structure, ripeness
Mechanics Vibrated excitation Firmness, viscoelasticity, ripeness
Sonic Firmness, viscoelasticity, internal cavity,
density, sugar content
Ultrasonic Internal cavity and structure, firmness, tenderness
Electromagnetic Impedance Moisture contents, density, sugar content,
density, internal cavity
MR/MRI Sugar content, oil, moisture content, internal
defect and structure
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
Fig. 1 Distribution of incident light in fruits (reprinted with permis-
sion from Mireei 2010)
about the object surface like its color (Mireei 2010). Only 4–
5% of incident light is reflected by both regular and external
diffuse reflectance. The remaining part of the light is passed
through the tissue skin and is distributed through the porous
space of the tissue meat (Birth 1976).
Most of the passing light is reflected by internal contents
of biological tissue and scattered toward the exterior tissue
surface. Because they interact with the internal components,
backscattered photons carry information related to the mor-
phology and structures of the tissue, such as the mechanical
properties. Lu (2004) stated that light scattering is a physical
phenomenon and depends on the cell size and inter- and
extra-cellular properties of tissue matrices. The joint surfa-
ces of the cell wall are the most common cause of backscat-
tering phenomenon in fruits and vegetables because they
lead to sudden changes in the reflection coefficients
(McGlone et al. 1997). However, suspended particles such
as starch, chloroplasts, and mitochondria may also be cause
of scattering by the refraction at their surface (Nicolai et al.
2007). The rest of passed light is absorbed by tissue meat or
is transmitted out from the fruit. Structural components of
food and agricultural products can absorb a specific amount
of light. The absorption ratio depends on the types of struc-
tural components, wavelength, and light path length.
Accordingly, biological tissues may be characterized by
their absorption and scattering properties, which are specific
to each material (Mireei 2010).
Physical Laws Governing Light Interactions
with Biological Materials in Backscattering Imaging
Refractive Index
As light passes from one material of given refractive index
(RI) to another material of a different RI, it bends and
refraction of light will occur. Snell’s law describes this
phenomenon:
sin i
n¼ ð1Þ
sin r
where n is the refractive index and i and r are angles of
incidence and refraction, respectively. Refractive index is
1467
also equal to the velocity c of light of a given wavelength in
free space divided by its velocity v in a substance, or n0c/v.
Therefore, it determines the speed of light in the medium,
and changes in the refractive index give rise to light scatter-
ing, refraction, and reflection (Qin 2007). For the biological
materials, several techniques have been introduced to mea-
sure the RI as described in Lai et al. (2010). Scientists
usually approximate the RI of the heterogeneous materials
by the volume-weighted average of the value of the tissue
constitutes. To model photon migration within the tissues in
the biomedical applications, the value of 1.4 has been used
to solve various boundary problems at the interfaces. The RI
of some human and animal tissues is in the range of 1.33 to
1.5 as described in the literature (Knuttel and Boehlau-
Godau 2000; Lai et al. 2005). Since the major portion of
agro-food products is made up by water, the value of RI is
close to 1.33 (e.g., the skim milk and oil palm fruit have a RI
of 1.46) (Bora et al. 2003 and Sukumar 2005).
Absorption Coefficient
Absorption coefficient (μa) is a measure of the rate of
decrease in the light intensity as it passes through a given
substance. The Beer–Lambert law states that there is a
logarithmic relation among the absorption coefficient, dis-
tance the light travels through the material (L), and light
intensity before (I0), and after (I) it passes through the
material (Tilley 2011):
1 I
μa ¼ lnð Þ ð2Þ
L I0
Absorption coefficient is primarily dependent on tissue
components. As stated in references, in the wavelength
range, 400–700-nm pigments and colored compounds like
anthocyanins, carotenoids, and chlorophylls are the main
source of light absorbance, while water, fats, proteins, and
carbohydrates are the major absorbers in the SWNIR region
(Qin 2007).
Scattering Coefficient
Scattering coefficient (μs) is the fraction of light scattered
per unit distance in a participating medium. This optical
concept is defined by the following equation:
dϕðLÞ ¼ μs ϕðLÞdL ð3Þ
where Φ and dΦ are, respectively, the powers of incident and
scattering light. This equation leads to the Beer–Lambert
law of light scattering in a medium (Tilley 2011).
Like the absorption coefficient, scattering coefficient
delivers important information about the internal structure,
especially tissue microscopic structure (cell, fibers), of
1468
agricultural and food materials. The reason here is due to the
local variation of the dielectric constant inside the medium.
In fact light scattering is due to the microscopic changes in
refractive index caused by membranes, air vacuoles, or
organelles which divert the photon paths and are ultimately
responsible for light diffusion. In a biological medium, light
can be scattered many times before being either absorbed or
re-emitted from the medium. This indicates that light scat-
tering in the VIS and SWNIR region is naturally stronger
than light absorption. Researchers showed the fall of the
scattering coefficient with increasing wavelength (Cubeddu
et al. 2002).
Reduced Scattering Coefficient
During the diffusion process, photons have a random move-
ment through the medium in a sequence of strides of lengths
and directions. Every stride being with a scattering event is
equally likely to be taken in any direction. Reduced scatter-
ing coefficient (μ0s) is a description of the combined effect of
scattering coefficient and average scattering angle as follows
(Qin 2007):
μ0s ¼ ð1  gÞμs ð4Þ
where g is the anisotropy factor that demonstrates the num-
ber of scattering events required before the initial photon
propagation direction is completely randomized. Heyney
and Greenstein in 1941 introduced the following function
to calculate the anisotropy factor:
1 1  g2
ρðθÞ ¼ ð5Þ
4p ð1 þ g 2  2g cos θÞ3=2
where ρ(θ) is a phase function and θ is the angle existing
between the direction of the photon before a scattering
event and the direction after the scattering event (in the
interval [0, π]).
Modeling the Light Propagation in Backscattering
Imaging
The heterogeneous structure of tissue, strong scattering, and
insufficiently known optical parameters make light propa-
gation to be a complex phenomenon for investigation. For
the complex geometries like the biological tissues, it is
impossible to solve this problem theoretically. In order to
investigate the behavior of light propagation in a biological
tissue, researchers introduced several methods, of which
diffusion theory model and Monte Carlo simulation were
widely used in literature. These models are constructed
using the optical properties, such as the refractive index,
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
absorption coefficient, and reduced scattering coefficient, as
described in the previous section.
Diffusion Theory Model
As stated in the “Concept of Light Backscattering”
section, the light propagation in biological tissues is
highly scatter dominated over the wavelength range
500–1,300 nm. The transport of photons is usually
approximated as a diffusion process when scattering is
a dominant mechanism in the turbid materials. The
following equation known as the approximate diffusion
theory model is used to express the radiation transfer
equation in biological tissues (Lu 2009):
!
1 dΦð r ; tÞ ! ! !
¼ Dr2 Φð r ; tÞ  μa Φð r ; tÞ þ Sð r ; tÞ ð6Þ
c dt
where
2
∇ Laplacian operator
c R ! ! Light velocity in the medium
!
Φð r ; tÞ ¼ Ið r ; Ω; t ÞdΩ Photon flux (photons per
4p square centimeter per second)
D ¼ ½3ðμa Rþ μ0 s Þ1! Diffusion coefficient
! !
Sð r ; tÞ ¼ Qð r ; Ω; t ÞdΩ The number of photons
4p !
emitted at position r and time
t per unit volume per unit time
Analytical solutions of Eq. 6 have been obtained for
simple geometries of turbid media. For irregular geometries
and inhomogeneous media, the above equation is solved by
numerical methods like steady-state, time resolved (TR),
and frequency domain (FD) (Qin 2007). Referring to the
papers in biomedical researches, the TR and FD methods
have been found to be suitable for medical diagnosis of
abnormal tissues. However, both TR and FD methods have
some drawbacks as follows:
& These methods are expensive in instrumentation.
& These methods are time-consuming in measurements.
& These methods require good contact between the sensor
and the object to be measured.
Regarding the above-mentioned drawbacks, TR and FD
methods are unsuitable to be used as an inexpensive, rapid,
and non-contact tool in food industry.
In the steady-state method, the tissue is perpendicularly
illuminated with a small light beam, and the diffused or re-
emitted light is measured at different distances from the
incident point (Fig. 2). Under the assumption of inexistence
of photon source in the medium, Eq. 6 is simplified as:
! !
Dr2 Φð r ; tÞ ¼ μa Φð r ; tÞ ð7Þ
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485 1469

Monte Carlo Simulation

Monte Carlo is a numerical technique that can be used to

simulate photon transport as a random walk from one inter-
action to another. Propagation of light in the tissue is sto-
chastic in nature and can be described using computer
simulation with appropriately weighted random absorption
and scattering events (Pavlin et al. 2003).
The Monte Carlo technique is more accurate than the
diffusion theory model near the light source and boundaries
and often considered the standard for simulated measure-
ments of photon transport for many biomedical applications.
Fig. 2 Measurement principle of the spatially resolved steady-state Because of its flexibility, it can keep track of multiple
method for measuring the optical properties of apple tissue (reprinted physical quantities simultaneously, with any desired spatial
with permission from Qin and Lu 2007b) and temporal resolution. However, because of its statistical
nature, this technique requires significant computation time
Farrell et al. (1992) solved the above equation analytically to achieve good simulation accuracy (Li et al. 2010).
as follows: There are a variety of ways to implement Monte Carlo
simulation of light transport. One approach is to predict
a0 1 1 eμeff :r1
Rf ðr; μa ; μ0s Þ ¼ ½ 0 ðμeff þ Þ ð8Þ steady-state light distributions. In this approach, a light
4p μ t r1 r12 photon is injected into the biological medium and then
1 4F 1 eμeff :r2 propagates through the medium based on the knowledge
þð þ Þðμ þ Þ 
μ0 t 3μ0 t eff
r2 r22 of optical properties of investigated material. The simulation
of light propagation in the medium is then carried out by
where
tracking huge number of photons. Finally, multiple physical
Rf Diffuse reflectance quantities including diffuse reflectance and internal photon
R Distance from the incident point absorption are scored simultaneously (Qin 2007).
0
a0 ¼ μ μþμs 0 Transport Albedo Wang et al. (1995) introduced a computer program code
a s
μeff ¼ ½3μa ðμa þ μ0s Þ1=2 Effective attenuation coefficient to simulate the light transport in multi-layered tissues by
μ0t ¼ μa þ μ0s Total attenuation coefficient Monte Carlo technique. After that, it was widely used in
biomedical applications to solve a lot of detailed tissue
optical issues. Recently, this technique in combination with
machine vision technology has found its application in bio-
and the variables r1 and r2 are given by the following two
systems engineering to extract optical properties of horticul-
equations:
tural produce as well as the path length and penetration
1 2 1 4F depth of photons that travel in the tissue (Qin and Lu
r1 ¼ ½ð Þ þ r2 1=2 ; and r2 ¼ ½ð 0 þ 0 Þ2 þ r2 1=2
μt
0 μ t 3μ t 2007b; Baranyai and Zude 2008, 2009).

In the above equation, F is the internal reflection coeffi-

cient and is calculated using the following relation:
1 þ rd
F¼
1  rd
where rd  1:440n2 1
r þ 0:710nr þ 0:688 þ 0:0636nr ,
nr ¼ nair , and ns and nair are refractive indices for the bio-
ns
logical material and air, respectively. The refractive index
for biological materials varies slightly with wavelength, but
this index is assumed to be constant in many applications.
Thus, if the profile of the incident point upon the media be
existed (left side of the Farrell’s equation), then the
unknowns coefficients μa and μ0s could be obtained by
applying a curve fitting procedure (Qin and Lu 2006; Qin
et al. 2009).
Components of LBI System
The result of backscattering imaging is highly affected by its
components. So, it is recommended to select appropriate
settings. Each LBI system consists of two essential ele-
ments: light source and imaging unit. Based on the type of
light source and detector, the LBI is divided into two main
techniques: monochromatic light backscattering imaging or
laser light backscattering imaging (LLBI) and broadband
light backscattering imaging that includes multispectral light
backscattering imaging (MLBI) and hyperspectral light
backscattering imaging (HLBI) (Lu and Peng 2006; Qing
et al. 2007a, 2008). These techniques have the same theo-
retical principles, but there are some differences regarding
1470
the acquisition and processing of images. These differences
are highlighted below.
Light Source
Light source must have this ability to produce continuous
light beam. The working wavelength (refer to “Wavelength
Selection” section for further information) and the size of
the light beam and its entrance angle into the sample are the
main factors in selecting the light source in LBI systems.
The smaller beam size is much preferred because it leads to
simplify the quantification of scattered light. Nonetheless,
the smaller the beam size, the lower the performance is. So,
a few numbers of scattered photons received by the detector,
and the area of scattering region is small (Lu 2004). Hence,
this is a challenge to find an appropriate beam size for the
target medium. The beam diameter of 1.6 mm (with diver-
gence angle of 0.024 rad), 1.5 mm (with divergence angle of
less than 0.296 rad), and 1 mm (with divergence angle of
less than 0.01 rad) have been used by researchers for apple,
peach, and kiwifruit, respectively (Peng and Lu 2005; Lu
and Peng 2006; Baranyai and Zude 2009).
Since the purpose is only to acquire the backscattering
photons, the incident angle of the light beam should be
chosen in such a way that the specular or surface reflectance
would not be acquired by the detector. The incident angle
between 7° and 25° with respect to the vertical axes is
recommended (Lu 2004; Qin and Lu 2007a, b). One of the
advantages of this setting, when the light beam is small and
perpendicular to the object’s surface, is the symmetry of the
acquired images to the incident point. This makes the pro-
cessing of images much easier.
In the LLBI technique, a laser diode is used as the light
source. Laser is the best monochromatic light source, which
can deliver more light per unit area for a given wavelength.
So, light penetrates deeper into the fruit flesh and the scat-
tered photons contain more information. Furthermore, the
image acquisition is fast. One of the drawbacks of this
Fig. 3 a A typical laser
scattering image of an apple
fruit at wavelength 780 nm
(reprinted with permission from
Qing et al. 2008) and b a typical
hyperspectral scattering image
of a peach fruit in the
wavelength range
600–1,000 nm, where the
horizontal and vertical axis
represent the spatial and
spectral dimensions,
respectively (reprinted with
permission from Lu
and Peng 2006)
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
technique is that the acquired images carry information just
in the considered wavelength (Qing et al. 2007a).
In the MLBI and HLBI techniques, a broadband light
(produced usually by a halogen lamp) is passed through a
small diameter optic fiber and then focused on the sample by a
converging lens. A broadband light source can provide all the
needed wavelengths. The resulting images contain complete
information in the considered wavelength range. The main
drawback of broadband light source is its low power per unit
area, which leads to shallow light penetration (Lu 2009).
Imaging Unit
Since the intensities of reflected images will decrease dras-
tically in a short distance from the beam incident point,
detector should have a large dynamic range and also high
photon efficiency especially in the SWNIR range (700–
1,000 nm) (Lu 2009). Both monochromatic and color
charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras are used in backscat-
tering imaging systems. A color CCD camera is a lot less
sensitive and quantum efficient than a monochrome one.
Also since it needs to build green, red, and blue compo-
nents, color CCD cameras are slower. Hence, it is better to
use monochromatic CCD imagers to get faster and to have
high-quality images.
The imaging unit in the LLBI consists of a CCD camera.
Since a broadband light is used in the MLBI and HLBI, an
imaging spectrograph is also used for image acquisition.
The imaging spectrograph is based on the prism–grating–
prism principle. When the incoming radiation passes the
prism–grating–prism unit, it is dispersed into different
wavelengths without alerting its spatial information. The
dispersed light is projected onto the pixels of the CCD
detector, creating a spatial two-dimensional image: One axis
represents a spectral dimension and the other axis a spatial
dimension (Lu 2008). Figure 3a, b shows a sample of image
acquired by monochromatic and broadband light scattering
techniques, respectively.
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
Technical Principles of LBI
To implement the LBI technique in practice, several things
must be considered. This includes selecting the appropriate
wavelengths to find the best spectral regions, preprocessing
the acquired images to prepare noiseless images, extracting
the region of interest (ROI) by using the segmentation
algorithms, extracting the useful information (features) from
the segmented regions, selecting the superior features to
reduce the feature vector size and to prepare more appropri-
ate features for modeling purposes, and finding a suitable
model to predict the desired quality parameters. These steps
are discussed in depths below.
Wavelength Selection
Selection of appropriate wavelengths for the target fruit is an
important and the first step in light backscattering imaging.
Since only a few numbers of wavelengths carry sufficient
information about the internal qualitative indices (chemical
and mechanical) of agro-food produce, the result of light
backscattering imaging is highly dependent to the selected
wavelengths. In the HLBI technique, the target is to find a
range of specific wavelengths, while only a limited number
of wavelengths should be selected for further studies in
LLBI technique. It must be noted that the wavelengths must
be selected in the range of VIS and SWNIR bandwidth, i.e.,
between 400 and 1,100 nm. The restriction in the bandwidth
region is because of limitations exist in detectors used in the
light backscattering imaging systems.
Generally, appropriate wavelengths for each medium are
selected using one of the following methods:
1. Use of the complete wavelength search: In this method,
a complete wavelength search by acquiring scattering
images at individual wavelengths over a spectral range
of interest is conducted. This method is expensive and
time-consuming (Lu 2009).
2. Use of the specific wavelengths: In this method, certain
wavelengths suggested by other researchers are used.
For instance, the wavelength of 680 nm is related to the
absorption of light by chlorophyll in the fruit and can be
used to predict the fruit maturity (Lu 2004).
3. Use of the results of NIR spectroscopy: This method is
better than the previously mentioned methods for wave-
length selection. Since absorption and scattering are
interrelated and influence each other, results of NIR
can be used as guidance for wavelength selection. In
this case, those wavelengths are selected that show a
strong relation between the actual value of qualitative
parameters and NIR predicted value (Lu 2004; Qing et
al. 2007b). The selected wavelengths are influenced by
the method of spectrum preprocessing and wavelength
1471
selection technique. To predict some qualitative param-
eters of apples, Qing et al. (2007b) used standard normal
variate and Savitzky–Golay as preprocessing tools,
while wavelengths selection was carried out using cor-
relation coefficient and genetic algorithm (GA) meth-
ods. They reported that the results given by means of
sensitive spectral bands found by GA are more suitable
than the correlation coefficient method. Other than GA,
there is a variety of data mining-based methods to be
used for wavelength selection process, like support vec-
tor machines, simulated annealing, sensitivity analysis,
etc. (Witten and Frank 2005). Since the wavelength
selection is categorized in the feature selection problems
in computer science, it seems using different data min-
ing techniques the designer of system can get better
decision in selecting the appropriate wavelengths.
Future studies must focus on this direction and intro-
duce the proper methods for each fruit.
If the results of NIR provided by the other
researchers are used, it must be checked whether
the measurement conditions are the same with the
current desired conditions or not. In the case of
difference, researchers must acquire their own NIR
spectra regarding to their measurement conditions.
The important point is that the appropriate wave-
lengths might be different for various internal quality
indices of fruits (Table 2).
Image Preprocessing
Improvement Signal-to-Noise Ratio
Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is a dimensionless ratio that
means the signal power to the noise power included in
an image. The higher the SNR ratio in an image, the less
obtrusive the noise is. In the image processing problems,
there is not always a clear correlation between the SNR
and the image quality as visually perceived by a human
observer (Pratt 1978). The source of noise in the LBI is
basically due to the improper functioning of the system
components and isolated dark or bright spots on the
specimens. In order to prevent the loss of information
from the large scattering distances, a high SNR is de-
sired. To reduce the negative influence of noise in
images and increase the SNR, researchers proposed dif-
ferent procedures as follows:
Radial averaging: Since backscattering images at each
wavelength are symmetric with respect to the light
incident point (Fig. 3a), this is possible to divide each
backscattering profile into several circular rings with a
specified widths (or pixels) and then substitute all pix-
els within each circular band with the average value of
1472 Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485

Table 2 Some appropriate

wavelengths for fruit quality Appropriate wavelength (nm) Quality index Fruit NIR technique References
inspection suggested by NIR
technique 620 SSC Cherry Interactance Carlini et al. 2000
680 Firmness Apple Reflectance Moons et al. 1997
680 MC Apple Reflectance Qing et al. 2007b
860 Firmness Kiwifruit Reflectance McGlone et al. 1997
860 Firmness Apple Reflectance Qing et al. 2007b
880 SSC Apple Reflectance Qing et al. 2007b
910 MC Apple Reflectance Qing et al. 2007b
940 SSC Apple Reflectance Ventura et al. 1998
1,010 SSC Apricot Interactance Carlini et al. 2000
800–1,100 Firmness Plum Reflectance Paz et al. 2008
800–1,100 Firmness Apple Reflectance Choi et al. 1997
780, 804, 880, 890, SSC Citrus Interactance Zude et al. 2008
SSC soluble solid content, MC 950, 1,050, and 1,080
moisture content

them. In the radial averaging technique, the important
thing is to find the center of backscattering images. The
image center is a point in which the maximum light
intensity occurs. Lu (2004) defined this point by com-
paring the average pixel value calculated from a pixel
moving window in the central image region (with a
specified dimension) at a wavelength in which no
CCD saturation is observed for all samples. His tech-
nique had ±10 pixels error for apple fruit due to the
variability of fruit size and surface geometry. To im-
prove the accuracy in determination of image center,
Peng and Lu (2005) used weighted center of gravity
(WCG) for each scattering images. Using WCG, center
of image in all wavelengths, in which CCD is saturated
or no-saturated, can be determined.
Profile averaging: The logic for this method is based on
the symmetry of scattering profile around the incident
point. The spectral profile of the two sides of the
incident point is averaged, and only one side of scatter-
ing profile, after averaging, is used for further inves-
tigations (Qin and Lu 2005).
Spectral averaging: In this method, the spectral aver-
aging is performed over some consecutive wavelengths
to improve the spectral resolution (nm/pixel), which
leads to an improvement in the SNR. Qin and Lu
(2006) reported that by averaging over three consecu-
tive wavelengths, the spectral resolution was three
times higher than that before averaging.
Pixel binning: It refers to the combination of the infor-
mation of adjacent pixels to create one single pixel in
the recorded image. In this method, the size of image
(image resolution) is decreased by averaging over a
mask (a pixel window with 2×2 or higher size). Thus,
the intensity per pixel increases by a factor of mask size
(Lu and Peng 2006).
Correction of Light Scattering Distortion
Most of fruits have more complex surface as curvature. This
curvature leads to a distortion in lights scattered from the fruit.
In this case, the backscattered light is lower than that when the
surface is flat. This means for a certain point on the fruit surface,
the reflectance captured by the imaging system underestimates
the actual value (Qing et al. 2007b). Fruits with the small size
(or large curvature) would have larger distortion in the back-
scattering signals. So, to get the better results in backscattering
imaging, it is necessary to modify the lights entering the CCD
camera based on the effect of distortion. Basically two types of
distortion may occur during the backscattering imaging due to
the fruit surface curvature: scattering light intensity distortion
and scattering distance (or profile) distortion.
The Lambertian cosine law is an ordinary method to
correct the light intensity distortion in the backscattering
images. This is supported by the results of experiments of
Kienle et al. (1996) in which they showed that scattering-
dominant materials obey Lambertian cosine law for angular
diffuse reflectance intensity. The corrected reflectance R(x)
is calculated using the following formula (Peng and Lu
2006c; Qing et al. 2007a):
Rm ðxÞ Rm ðxÞS
RðxÞ ¼ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð9Þ
cos θ S 2  x2
where Rm(x) is the measured reflectance, θ is the angle
between the imaging direction and the measured position
on fruit surface, S is the radius of measured position on fruit
surface, and x is the linear horizontal distance between
measured position on fruit surface and center of light scat-
tering profile (Fig. 4a). This law shows that the higher
correction should be performed at the locations with higher
distance from the scattering center.
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
Fig. 4 Corrections for the fruit
shape effect on the light
intensity distortion by a
Lambertian cosine law
(reprinted with permission from
Peng and Lu 2007) and b
modified Lambertian cosine
law (reprinted with permission
from Qin and Lu (2008))
Although the Lambertian cosine law is commonly used
for correction of intensity distortion, to get the better cor-
rection, Qin and Lu (2008) developed the Lambertian cosine
law by differentiating on a very small line element, dS, at a
distance r from the illumination center and then integrating
over the acceptance angle (θ2 −θ1).
ðθ0 þ sin 2θ0 =2ÞRm ðxÞ
RðxÞ ¼ ð10Þ
ðθ2 =2 þ sin 2θ2 =4Þ  ðθ1 =2 þ sin 2θ1 =4Þ
where R(x) is the corrected reflectance, Rm(x) is the mea-
sured reflectance, θ0 ¼ tan1 ðrz =LÞ, θ1 ¼ a  g, θ2 ¼ a þ b,
a ¼ sin1 ðr=ra Þ, b ¼ tan1 ððrz þ rÞ=ðL þ hÞÞ, g ¼ tan1
ððrz  rÞ=ðL þ hÞÞ, h ¼ ra  ðra2  r2 Þ1=2, r is the horizontal
distance to the illumination center, ra is the radius of the fruit
that is assumed to be circular or cylindrical, rz is the radius
of the zoom lens, and L is the object distance (see Fig. 4b for
further inspiration). Readers can refer to Qin and Lu (2008)
to see the mathematical proof of Eq. 10.
Regarding the correction of distance (or profile) distor-
tion, researchers presented two formulas to this date. They
assumed the fruit shape as a sphere in their calculations.
Peng and Lu (2006c) presented the following formula:
x
z ¼ Stan1 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð11Þ
S  x2
2
Although Eq. 11 corrects the backscattering image at each
point within the scattering profile of the fruit, to get the
faster correction, Qing et al. (2007a) proposed a new rela-
tion in which the area of light scattering captured by the
camera (A) is corrected (A′). This makes the correction on
the whole area of backscattering profile instead of point by
point correction.
2A
A0 ¼ ð12Þ
ð1 þ cos θÞ
1473
To examine the usefulness of above corrections, some
experiments have been carried out by comparing the results
before and after correction of light scattering distortion. As
an instance, the percentage of increase in accuracy for
firmness prediction in red delicious apple using Eqs. 9 and
11 was 3.46 and 2.03%, respectively, whereas the increase
rate was 3.15 and 2.18% for golden delicious apple, respec-
tively, after correction with these equations (Peng and Lu
2006c). In another research, Qing et al. (2007a) reported an
increase of 15.49% in prediction of SSC of Elstar apple by
using Eq. 12. All experiments showed the usefulness of
corrections.
Image Segmentation
Segmentation is an operation that takes an image as input
and returns one or more regions or subpixel-precise con-
tours as output. The goal of this operation is to simplify and/
or change the representation of an image into something that
is more meaningful and easier to analyze (Hornberg 2006).
In the LBI, the aim is to extract regions from the image that
correspond to the objects we are interested in. The ROI is
that parts of image which their pixels contain reflected
photons.
The simplest segmentation algorithm is to threshold the
image. The most important issue in thresholding is to find
appropriate threshold values. The simplest way is to find
this value by visual inspection. This method is used when
the image is in the red–green–blue (RGB) color space. So
only when this technique can be used in LBI the backscat-
tered light is in the VIS range of electromagnetic spectrum.
Tu et al. (2000) used the normalized R, G, and B compo-
nents to segment ROI from the background. Since the laser
beam source was red light (670 nm), data from G and B
components were much less significant, and thresholding
1474 Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485

was made based solely on the intensity of red light (value of

normalized R component).
Since the LBI is performed in the SWNIR wavelengths
too, the visual inspection is not a suitable technique to find
the optimal threshold values. Histogram-based threshold
algorithms are well-known procedures for this task. In this
technique, image is transformed to the gray scale mode and
then a histogram is computed from all of the pixels in the
image, and the peaks and valleys in the histogram are used
to locate the image clusters. Qing et al. (2007a) used bi-
modal thresholding, as a histogram-based technique, to ad-
just global threshold value of scattering images. They
computed the second derivative of histogram and then
equated it to zero. The optimum point is where the first
inflection in the image histogram occurred.
Otsu’s threshold is another histogram-based technique
used by researchers to segment the light backscattered pixels
from the background signal (Qing et al. 2007a). Otsu’s
method chooses the threshold value so that G in the follow-
ing equation is maximized (Otsu 1979):

G ¼ w0 ðμ0  μT Þ2 þ w1 ðμ1  μT Þ2 ð13Þ

where ω0 is the proportion of light scattering pixels, ω1 is the

proportion of background pixels, μ0 is the average gray
value of light scattering, μ1 is the average gray value of
background, and μT is the average gray value of whole
image.
Recently, Baranyai and Zude (2009) introduced a novel
method, known as cluster analysis, to segment useful sec-
tions of backscattering images from the background and
from the pixels in which the CCD is saturated. They
obtained one-dimensional scattering profile from the two-
dimensional images (Fig. 5a). This transformation is valid
because of the radial symmetry of backscattered region with
respect to the light incident point. Afterward, the logarith-
mic transform of one-dimensional scattering profile was
calculated. Segmentation thresholds are selected by inspec-
tion of logarithmic profile behavior through the radial dis-
tance from the incident point. As an example, the initial
plateau in the Fig. 5b shows pixels with high intensity value
due to the saturation of CCD. This part should be omitted
because of the inconsistency of signals in it. The ROI, the
second part of logarithmic profile, shows a linearly decreas-
ing behavior. The background segment is the last section of
curve in which intensity value is decreased to a noise level.
Feature Extraction
In image processing, when raw image data are used directly
as the input for classification or function approximation
purposes, the dimension of measurement vector can easily
attain values of m×n (an m×n image). For two reasons, the
Fig. 5 One-dimensional intensity profile of kiwifruit at wavelength
785 nm (a) and its logarithmic transform (b) (reprinted with permission
from Baranyai and Zude 2009)
dimension of the measurement vector cannot be taken arbi-
trary large. The first reason is that the computational com-
plexity becomes too large, and the second reason is that an
increase of the dimension ultimately causes a decrease of
performance (Heijden et al. 2004). Regarding the backscat-
tering images, this is possible to consider the total number of
pixels (the area of backscattering region on the medium
surface) (Romano et al. 2010), intensity value of the pixels
remained after segmentation (Qing et al. 2007a, 2008), or
some statistical characteristics of backscattering region (Noh
and Lu 2005, 2007) as a feature vector to predict the quality
of agro-food produce by a calibration model. These methods
are simple and fast; however, researchers used different
techniques to find an appropriate feature vector leading to
better prediction of qualitative indices.
Lu (2004) used the radial averaging, similar to that de-
scribed in “Improvement Signal-to-Noise Ratio” section for
SNR improvement, to obtain the average value of all pixels
within each circular band of scattering images. He divided
the scattering region of photons in images to 26 rings with
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485 1475

an equal diameter of seven pixels. By this procedure, the
scattering profiles are converted from two- to one-
dimensional, and this considerably reduces the size of fea-
ture vector. Selection of ring width is an arbitrary task, but
increasing the number of rings leads to a better feature
vector because it carries more information of image in itself.
To obtain a low-size feature vector, researchers used one-
dimensional profile of the scattering images after radial
averaging and then extracted some new features from these
profiles. One method is to find the parameters of mathemat-
ical functions, which can describe the behavior of one-
dimensional scattering profile (Peng and Lu 2005, 2006c,
2007). Since the one-dimensional profiles are of radial sym-
metry, researchers investigated different semi-Gaussian dis-
tribution functions to fit scattering profiles as a function of
scattering distance (Table 3). Before fitting the functions,
this is recommended to do some pretreatments on the pro-
files to fit the scattering profiles more accurately. This leads
to have a better prediction without the influence of noise and
light saturation at the incident area. These pretreatments are:
(1) normalizing by a maximum light intensity occurred at
the center of saturation area (Peng and Lu 2007), (2) remov-
ing the data points next to the incident area (saturation area),
and (3) shifting the curves on each side of the profile toward
the profile center by a distance of removed saturation area
pixels (Peng and Lu 2005).
The other method is to extract the absorption and reduced
scattering coefficients of one-dimensional profile from the
Farrell’s diffusion theory model (discussed in “Diffusion
Theory Model” section). Because of non-uniformity in the
scale of experimental reflectance profile and Farrell’s mod-
el, this task needs some preprocessing process. First, pro-
files should be normalized at a specific distance with respect
to the incident point. Then calibration may be carried out on
the normalized profiles. Calibration is performed when the
response of the imaging system seems to be non-uniform.
After completing the normalizing and calibration processes,
the normalized Farrell’s model is fitted to the normalized
experimental data using a curve fitting procedure. Former
researches reported the usefulness of nonlinear error least
square fitting algorithm for this purpose (Qin and Lu 2005,
2006, 2007a, b).
Size Reduction of Feature Vector
If the extracted feature vector directly be used as an input to
a machine learning algorithm, the problem of overfitting
may occur. This leads to decrease in the performance of the
prediction model significantly. One strategy to prevent over-
fitting, or at least to reduce its effect, is the reduction of the
dimension of the extracted feature vector. An additional ad-
vantage of this strategy is that it automatically reduces the
computational complexity (Heijden et al. 2004). There are two
ways of avoiding the curse of dimensionality in extracted
features: feature selection and feature compression.
Feature selection (also known as attribute or subset
selection) is a process commonly used in machine learn-
ing, wherein a subset of the original features, extracted
features, available from the data are selected according to
a certain application of a learning algorithm. Some of the
extracted features may be irrelevant or redundant to the
learning task leading to the problem of overfitting and
subsequently will deteriorate the performance of the
employed learning algorithm. The best subset contains
the least number of dimensions that leads to improve
the learning performance such as predictive accuracy,
training speed, and result comprehensibility. So it is an
essential and an important task to select the relevant and
necessary features before constructing a predictive model
(Dash and Liu 1997; Liu and Motoda 2008).

Table 3 Distribution functions

used to fit the scattering profiles Function name Function equation No. of Reference
as a function of scattering features
distance ð
jr j
Þ
Exponential RE ðrÞ ¼ a1E þ a2E e a3E 3 Peng and Lu 2005
0:5ða r Þ2
Gaussian RG ðrÞ ¼ a1G þ a2G e 3G 3 Peng and Lu 2005
Lorentzian RL ðrÞ ¼ a1L þ 1þð r Þ2
a2L
3 Peng and Lu 2005
a3L
Modified RML2 ðrÞ ¼ 1þð r 1 Þa4ML2 2 Peng and Lu 2007
a3ML2
Lorentzian 2
Modified RML3 ðrÞ ¼ a1ML3 þ 1þð1ar 1ML3
Þa4ML3 3 Peng and Lu 2007
a3ML3
Lorentzian 3
Modified RML4 ðrÞ ¼ a1ML4 þ 1þð a2ML4
a4ML4 4 Peng and Lu
a3ML4 Þ
r

Lorentzian 4 2006a, b
R(r) is the light intensity of each Modified RMG2 ðrÞ ¼ 1  eexpða3MG2 r:a4MG2 Þ 2 Peng and Lu 2007
circular band after radial aver- Gompertz 2
aging and r is the distance from Modified RMG3 ðrÞ ¼ 1  ð1  a1MG3 Þeexpða3MG3 r:a4MG3 Þ 3 Peng and Lu 2007
the profile center. To see the Gompertz 3  
description of parameters in Modified RMG4 ðrÞ ¼ a1MG4 þ a2MG4 1  eexpða3MG4 r:a4MG4 Þ 4 Peng and Lu 2007
equations, refer to the references Gompertz 4
provided
1476 Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485

Up-to-date several techniques for feature selection have
been developed based on the three types of generation
procedures (i.e., complete, heuristic, and random) and three
types of evaluation criteria (i.e., filter, wrapper, and hybrid)
(see Table 4). Liu and Yu (2005) reviewed the last achieve-
ments in this subject. Since each of these techniques has
some limitations, researchers proposed to perform the fea-
ture selection process using more than one technique.
Size reduction of feature vector can also be achieved
by transforming the data to a new set of axes, wherein
differentiability is higher in a subset of the transformed
features than in any subset of the original data. This is a
useful technique to reduce the size of feature vector
when a lot of features are extracted but these features
are strongly correlated. The most commonly used feature
compression techniques are principal component analysis
(PCA) and Fisher’s linear discriminant analyses (FLDA)
(Jiang et al. 2010).
PCA is a linear transformation in which a new coordinate
system is selected for the data set. In this new coordinate
system, PCA transforms correlated variables into uncorre-
lated ones and determines the linear combinations with high
and low variability. These uncorrelated variables are termed
as principal components (PCs) of each data vector of the
data set and the succeeding PCs accounts for as much of the
remaining variability in the data. In case the data are highly
collinear (redundant), the first few PCs explain most of the
variability in the data and are retained (Omid et al. 2009,
2010).
PCA is an unsupervised technique and as such does not
include label information of the features. So we have no reason
to assume that components are useful for discriminating be-
tween features in different classes. FLDA is a supervised
technique which solves this problem. This method selects
projection in such a way that the ratio of the between-class
scatter and the within-class scatter is maximized. The

Table 4 Summary of feature selection methods (reprinted from Liu and Yu (2005))

Search strategies

Complete Sequential Random

Evaluation criteria Filter Distance B&B Relief

BFF ReliefF
ReliefS
SFS
Segen’s
Information MDLM DTM Dash’s
Koleer’s SBUD
SFG
FCBF
Dependency Bobrowski’s CFS Mitra’s
RRESET
POE+ACC
DVMM
Consistency Focus Set Cover LVI
ABB QBB
MIFESI LVF
Schlimmer’s
Wrapper Predictive accuracy BS SBS-SLASH AICC SA
or cluster goodness AMB&B WSFG FSSEM RGSS
FSLC WSBG ELSA LVW
FSBC BDS RMHC-PF
PQSS GA
RC RVE
SS
Queiros
Hybrid Filter+wrapper BBHFS
Xing’s Dash_liu’s
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
combination of PCA and FLDA techniques brings the advan-
tages of two techniques, i.e., there will be a set of projection
vectors with enough information from the original features
(Cheng et al. 2004).
Since the number of extracted features in the previous
works in the field of backscattering imaging was low, it
seems that it was not necessary to apply the feature selection
process (Qing et al. 2007a, 2008; Romano et al. 2008,
2010). However, Noh and Lu (2005, 2007) used PCA to
perform the feature compression for only three features
(maximum, mean, and standard deviation of intensity values
in scattering images). In another research, Peng and Lu
(2005) investigated the usefulness of parameters of
Lorentzian, exponential, and Gaussian functions as a feature
set. According to their report, parameters of Lorentzian
function could better predict the firmness in apple fruit
because it showed the higher coefficient of determination
(R2) and lower standard error estimates compared to the
parameters of two other models. Furthermore, Peng and
Lu (2007) used leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV)
as a data mining technique to find out which combina-
tion of parameters in distribution functions described in
Table 3 is suitable to be used as a feature vector. Their
results showed that combination of all parameters for
modified Gompertz function 4 and modified Gompertz
function 3 (See Table 3) is better than the others to
predict SSC and firmness of apple fruit, respectively.
The evaluation given by LOOCV is good, but it seems
very expensive to compute and also the method overfits
when the number of features grows large. So in this
condition, it is highly recommended to use other feature
selection techniques shown in Table 4.
Calibration Models
The final step in backscattering imaging is to make a cali-
bration model between the selected features and the inter-
ested factors. In the other words, the object is to construct a
brief model by supervised learning to infer a function from
the supervised training data. In machine learning tasks,
usually the data set is divided into two categories: training
and testing. After randomization, about two third of the data
is selected as the training or calibration set and the rest as the
testing or validation set. The training set consists of a set of
training examples, which each example is a pair consisting
of an input and output vector. The supervised learning or
calibrating algorithm analyzes the training/calibrating set
and then infers a function.
A lot of machine learning techniques are available to
train/calibrate the reference data in order to approximate
new samples based on the training/calibrating stage. In the
following, only techniques that have been used in LBI to
this date are described.
1477
Statistical Models
Statistical models used to establish the relationship between
response variable and one or more independent variables
within the form of math equations. Regression modeling, as
the main type of statistical models, includes a list of mod-
eling techniques like linear regression, nonlinear regression,
and partial least square. Basically two types of linear regres-
sion exist: simple linear regression and multilinear regres-
sion. The difference between the two is the number of
independent variables. In simple linear regression, a single
independent variable is used to predict the value of a depen-
dent variable, while two or more independent variables are
used in multilinear regression to build the model. Various
techniques have been improved for parameter estimation
and inference in linear regression. These methods differ in
computational simplicity of algorithms, presence of a
closed-form solution, robustness with respect to heavy-
tailed distributions, and theoretical assumptions needed to
validate desirable statistical properties such as consistency
and asymptotic efficiency.
Principal component and partial least square are estima-
tion techniques commonly used to build the linear regres-
sion in LBI (Qing et al. 2008). Principle component
regression (PCR) is used when the size of feature vector is
large, or when strong correlations exist among the feature
set. This two-stage procedure first reduces the feature set
using PCA then uses the reduced variables in an ordinary
least square regression fit. Partial least square regression is
the extension of PCR method, but instead of finding hyper-
planes of maximum variance between the response and
independent variables, it finds a linear regression model by
projecting the feature set and the desired output to a new
space (Gutierrez-Osuna 2002). The main drawback of sta-
tistical modeling, i.e., non-adaptability, has led researchers
to use soft-computing techniques for modeling in backscat-
tering imaging.
Artificial Neural Networks
Artificial neural network (ANN) is a computational model-
ing procedure that mimics the structure of human brain in
processing information and making instantaneous decision
(Karray and Silva 2004). Unlike the statistical techniques,
an ANN is a self-adapting and a dynamic system that can
change its reaction to outer compels utilizing earlier experi-
ence, offering a more adaptable and, due to the parallelism,
quicker process of analysis (Hassun 2003). As demonstrated
in many research papers, determination of topology and
adjustment of internal elements are the main factors in
designing of a suitable network (Haykin 1999; Omid et al.
2009, 2010). Network topology corresponds to the ordering
and organization of the neurons from the input layer to the
1478 Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485

output layer of the network. The multilayer perceptron
(MLP) with the backpropagation learning strategy, which
is a feedforward ANN, is a mostly used topology to model
the engineering problems. Furthermore, “trial and error” is a
common way to adjust the network structure. Using this
strategy, different types of neurons ordering are considered
and finally that structure in which the maximum correlation
between desired output and network output exist is selected.
For instance, Lu (2004) found that MLP network with 10
neurons in hidden layer running in 20 epochs is the best
structure of ANN to predict the firmness and SSC of apple
by the ratios of scattering profiles from two different spec-
tral bands. This procedure had been used also to make a
calibration model for apple titratable acidity prediction dur-
ing the shelf life (Noh and Lu 2007).
Applications
Several papers reported the application of LBI for quality
evaluation of agricultural and food products. Table 5 shows
a summary of the previous works in this direction.
Generally, we can divide the applications in three categories:
fruit quality inspection, postharvest process monitoring, and
food quality control.
Fruit Quality Inspection
Quality inspection of fruits is one of the most interesting
areas of research in biosystems engineering. Quality sensing
of fruits has some unique problems that are not found to the
same extent with other food products. Each variety of fruit
has unique characteristics that undergo sensory evaluation
by the consumers during the eating experience to determine
ripeness quality. Furthermore, quality attributes of fruits
change during the physiological life. During the past deca-
des, various optical methods have been developed to eval-
uate the fruit internal and external qualitative indices
(Cubero et al. 2011). Most of these techniques are expensive
and require advanced instruments. Compared to the mag-
netic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear magnetic reso-
nance, and X-ray imaging, LBI is a cheap and easy to

Table 5 Summary of references on applications of backscattering imaging for quality evaluation of agricultural and food products

Imaging Medium type Wavelength (nm) Calibration Application Reference

technique model

LLBI Tomato 670 PR Maturity evaluation Tu et al. 2000

MLBI Apple (Red Delicious) 680, 880, 905, 940, ANN Prediction of firmness and SSC after Lu 2004
and 1,060 storage
MLBI Apple (Red and 650, 680, 700, 740, 800, MLR Prediction of firmness during ripening Peng and Lu 2006c
Golden Delicious) 820, 880, 910, 990
HLBI Apple (Golden 530–950 MLR Prediction of firmness and SSC Lu et al. 2006
Delicious) after storage
HLBI Peach (Red Haven 500–1,000 MLR Prediction of firmness during ripening Lu and Peng 2006
and Coral Star)
LLBI Apple (Fuji and Gala) 650 LR Ripeness detection during shelf life Tu et al. 2006
HLBI Milk 530–900 LR Prediction of fat content Qin and Lu 2007a
LLBI Apple (Golden 408 ANN Prediction of skin and flesh color, SSC, Noh and Lu 2007
Delicious) firmness, and TA after storage
HLBI Beef meat 496–1,036 MLR Prediction of tenderness Cluff et al. 2008
LLBI Banana 670 LR Prediction of MC during drying Romano et al. 2008
process
LLBI Apple (Elstar and 680, 780, 880, PLSR, PCR, Prediction of firmness and SSC Qing et al. 2008
Pinova) 940, and 980 and SMLR during ripening
LLBI Apple (Idared and 670 and 785 – Bruise detection Baranyai and Zude
Golden Delicious) 2008
HLBI Tomato 400–1,000 – Ripeness detection Qin and Lu 2008
LLBI Apple (Pinova and 785 – Ripening detection during storage Baranyai et al. 2009
Elstar)
LLBI Banana 670 – Prediction of MC during drying Romano et al. 2010
LLBI Apple (Gala) 635 LR and PR Prediction of MC, SSC, and hardness Romano et al. 2011a
during drying
LLBI Bell pepper 532 and 635 NR Prediction of MC and color Romano et al. 2011b

LLBI laser light backscattering imaging, MLBI multispectral light backscattering imaging, HLBI hyperspectral light backscattering imaging, PR
polynomial regression, LR linear regression, PCR principal component regression, MLR multilinear regression, SMLR stepwise multilinear
regression, PLSR partial least square regression, NR nonlinear regression, SSC soluble solids content, TA titratable acidity
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
Fig. 6 The hyperspectral
imaging setup to acquire the
fruit backscattering images
(reprinted with permission from
Lu and Peng 2006)
implement technique. Most of the researches have focused
to predict the fruit internal qualitative parameters; however,
no research work has been reported to inspect the fruit
internal defects to this date.
Lu and Peng (2006) used HLBI technique to predict
firmness as an important parameter in determining the ma-
turity of peach fruit. The broadband light beam with a
diameter of 1.6 mm was glinted onto the fruit surface
through an optical fiber and a focusing lens. A total of 153
spectral scattering profiles between the spectral range 500–
1,000 nm were acquired by single-line scanning the fruits
using a spectrograph (see Fig. 6). Best firmness prediction
was obtained at the wavelength of 670 nm. This shows that
changes in firmness are associated with changes in fruit
chlorophyll content.
In another research, Qin and Lu (2007b) introduced a
new method to improve the quality of backscattering
images from the moving samples. As shown in Fig. 7,
using a photoelectric sensor and two stepper motors,
movement of samples in both horizontal and vertical
directions were exactly controlled. Instead of using
single-line scanning method, they acquired several images
for every 1-mm horizontal displacement over a total
Fig. 7 The modified
hyperspectral imaging setup for
moving apples. a Movement
control units, b 10 scanning
lines over a 9-mm horizontal
displacement (reprinted with
permission from Qin and Lu
2007b)
1479
range of 9 mm, and only the average of images was
used for further processing. Simulation of light propaga-
tion by Monte Carlo technique showed that apples with a
larger absorption coefficient value absorb light energy
rapidly in the short depth and radial distances. These
researchers reported the effect of pigments and water in
apple tissue on light penetration depth.
According to Tu et al. (2006), the fruit size has no
significant effect on the total acquired photons in the scat-
tering images, while the different sides of fruit (background
and blush side) have significant differences (p < 0.05).
Furthermore, the area of backscattering region got by the
laser beam from apple was increasing significantly (p<0.05)
following the ripeness.
In two separate studies, Baranyai and Zude (2008, 2009)
investigated the light propagation in apple and kiwifruit
tissue by LLBI technique and Monte Carlo simulation.
Their results showed that the effect of anisotropy factor on
the shape of backscattering profiles is much higher than that
of scattering coefficient. Significant differences (p<0.01
using multifactor ANOVA test) were observed between
anisotropy factor of premium quality and overripe kiwifruits
with respect to the texture properties. Furthermore, they
1480
found significant differences (p<0.05) between the back-
scattering profiles of apples responded to bruising during
storage.
The utility of HLBI as a non-invasive technique for
monitoring the ripening of tomato was studied by Qin and
Lu (2008). Tomato samples with the green background
color have a considerable amount of chlorophyll, and there-
fore, absorption coefficient was in its highest value at
675 nm. By increasing the ripening of a tomato fruit from
the green stage to the pink stage, anthocyanin is made and
begins to increase, while its chlorophyll content decreases.
Accordingly, absorption showed a decrease at 675 nm and
an increase at 535 nm from the green stage to the pink stage.
These researchers reported that the value of the absorption
coefficient in the wavelength range 535–675 is a suitable
procedure to monitor the ripening of tomato fruit with
considering the color skin as a criterion for its ripening.
By Baranyai et al. (2009), LLBI technique at the wave-
length 785 nm was used to monitor the optical properties of
apple tissue at three different ripening stages (unripe, ripe,
and overripe) during the storage for a period of 160 days
under temperature- and atmosphere-controlled conditions.
The results indicated an increase in the interaction coeffi-
cient from the 0 to 81 days of storage and a decrease after it.
Furthermore, they observed a steady decrease in the value of
the anisotropy factor during the storage. Hence, it can be
concluded that anisotropic factor is an important feature for
monitoring the ripeness of apples.
Other than fruit firmness prediction, researchers tried to
find a suitable processing method to build a good calibration
between backscattering images and other fruit internal qual-
itative indices. Nonetheless, they were not successful in
finding a good calibration for these indices like that for
firmness. As an instance, Noh and Lu (2007) reported that
the correlation coefficient between the predicted values of
apple firmness by the PCA-ANN model and the real values
was about 0.75, while this value was found as 0.66 and 0.57
for SSC and TA indices, respectively. Similar findings were
observed in another research by Qing et al. (2008).
Postharvest Process Monitoring
Postharvest engineering emphasizes research on conservation
and processing of agricultural products at and after the point of
harvest to increase product availability and to prevent or
Fig. 8 Effect of MC changes
on laser backscattering images
at wavelength 635 nm during
drying of apple slices (reprinted
with permission from Romano
et al. 2011a). Digits show the
different levels of moisture
content (percent w.b.)
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
minimize losses in order to maximize the profits inferred
therefrom. Drying is one of the important branches of post-
harvest engineering, which increases the product shelf life
without the addition of any chemical preservative and reduces
the packaging and transportation costs due to a reduction in
the size and weight of product (Mujumdar 2000).
Continuous monitoring of fruit qualitative parameters
during drying is of stark importance for food industry in
order to prevent over-drying and to maximize drying per-
formance. Recently, several attempts have been made to
apply modern technologies, like MRI (Zeng et al. 1996),
machine vision (Martynenko 2006), and NIR spectroscopy
(Stawczyk et al. 2009), for non-invasively monitoring the
drying process.
The LBI is novel and in its infancy for application in
drying technology as its application to monitor the changes
during fruit drying started in 2008. A preliminarily study on
monitoring the variation of MC of banana slices subject to
different drying conditions with LLBI technique was con-
ducted by Romano et al. (2008). Since then, the backscat-
tering imaging was evaluated so that it can be used as an
applied technique at drying industry by testing its perfor-
mance for prediction of color (Romano et al. 2010), SSC,
and hardness (Romano et al. 2011a) changes of different
fruits during drying.
LLBI showed a promising result to predict the MC
changes of banana (Romano et al. 2010), apple (Romano
et al. 2011a), and bell pepper (Romano et al. 2011b), espe-
cially at lower drying temperatures. By increasing the dry-
ing time, turgor pressure against the cell walls decreased,
resulting in the decrease of MC. Therefore, the fruit surface
will be rougher, and consequently, optical density increased.
This leads to a decrease in the number of scattering photons
from the samples (Fig. 8). Romano et al. (2011a) showed
that light luminance can predict the changes in MC and SSC
of apple much better than the backscattering area.
According to their results, laser scattering at 635 nm is not
a suitable technique for predicting firmness variation.
In another work, Romano et al. (2010) investigated the
influence of the fruit discoloration on the light distortion
into the banana slices. They conducted the experiments
under three pretreatments, namely dipping in distilled water,
chilling, and soaking in ascorbic acid. The best prediction of
MC achieved when ascorbic acid was used as pretreatment.
As an important result, it was reported that tissue browning
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
has no significant influence on the light scattering at the
wavelength 670 nm.
Food Quality Control
As an essential part in any food processing business, quality
control is used to test the processed food and to predict its
quality and then control the process so that the expected
quality is achieved. There is an urgent need to develop
accurate inspection techniques to be used in automated
quality control systems in the sustenance supply chain.
Brosnan and Sun (2004) in a review paper highlighted the
principles and applications of computer vision-based tech-
niques used in food industry for quality inspection. The LBI,
as a machine vision-based technique, is a new emerging
method that has been used in a limited laboratory condition
for inspecting the quality of dairy and meat products. Qin
and Lu (2007a) investigated the possibility of using LBI
technique as a control procedure for milk fat content pre-
diction. They acquired the hyperspectral backscattering
images of milk samples in five different fat contents from
0 to 3.25%. As shown in Fig. 9, fat content influences on the
absorption and scattering coefficient of milk samples result-
ing in the increase of scattering profile as the milk fat
content decreased. Values of absorption and reduced scat-
tering coefficients at the wavelength 600 nm showed the
strong ability of HLBI technique for prediction of milk fat
content in dairy industry with the correlation coefficient
0.995 and 0.998, respectively.
Fig. 9 Quality control of milk by HLBI technique: a hyperspectral
reflectance images of milk samples with different fat contents in the
wavelength range 200–1,040 nm, b spectra of the absorption
1481
As stated by Prieto et al. (2009), in the case of quality
control of meat, the quality standards should be kept from
the slaughtering cattle until the meat shipping as close as
possible to the preference of the target consumer. Thus,
different destructive and nondestructive techniques such as
chemical procedures, NIR spectroscopy, electronic tongue,
and electronic nose have been used to provide information
about the meat quality. Tenderness is one of the important
elements of meat eating quality in the beef industry that
affects the repurchase decision of consumers. Variability in
tenderness, as the main criteria for meat eating quality, leads
to decline in market shares because of consumer dissatis-
faction. In a research work, Cluff et al. (2008) investigated
the feasibility of LBI as a nondestructive technique for
predicting beef steak tenderness in meat industry. After
acquiring the hyperspectral backscattering images at the
wavelength range between 496 and 1,036 nm (see
Fig. 10), they used stepwise regression to predict the
beef steak tenderness by the Warner–Bratzler shear
(WBS) force scores and the parameters of modified
Lorentzian distribution function. Their results indicated
that the backscattering information at the wavelengths
501, 510, 646, 651, 927, 1,005, and 1,023 nm are more
important than the others to make the calibration model.
Their system was able to predict the WBS values with
the correlation coefficient of 0.67. This shows that the
LBI needs more research works to increase its accuracy
for implementing of this technique in the real conditions
in beef industry.
coefficient of milk samples, and c spectra of the reduced scattering
coefficient of milk samples (reprinted with permission from Qin and
Lu 2007a)
1482
Fig. 10 Quality evaluation of beef meat: a schematic of HLBI system for acquiring the scattering images and b hyperspectral scattering image of a
beef steak (reprinted with permission from Cluff et al. 2008)
Conclusions
This paper has been an attempt to review the state of the art
of light backscattering imaging in quality evaluation of
agro-food products. It provided an insight into the principles
of this technique. The authors observed that this method is
clearly efficient to predict the firmness of fruits as well as
milk fat content in dairy industry, but its potential on the
other quality parameters of agro-food products is still under
investigation. Although we are witnessing a considerable
achievement in development of this technique during the
last decade, there are still significant challenges in this field
that have to be considered by researchers. In the following,
some suggestions are pointed out for improving LBI sys-
tems in the future researches:
& The best way to find appropriate wavelengths is to use
NIR spectroscopy or other optical techniques like hyper-
spectral imaging, which brings the benefits of both spec-
troscopy and imaging. To remove any irrelevant
information, which has negative impacts on the selection
of appropriate wavelengths, it is important to perform
some spectral preprocessing techniques. To this date,
several preprocessing methods have been developed
for this purpose (Nicolai et al. 2007). This includes
techniques to reduce the effect of thermal noise of the
detector on acquired signals (averaging technique), to
remove random noise from NIR spectra using smooth-
ing techniques (Savitzky–Golay algorithm and moving
average filters), and to reduce the spectral variation
arising from the sample curvature (multiplicative scatter
correction and normalization techniques). These
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
preprocessing should be considered in the future works.
Furthermore, determining a complete range of wave-
length for different types of medium in food industry is
advised.
& The preprocessing techniques used to improve SNR,
discussed in “Improvement Signal-to-Noise Ratio” sec-
tion, have some disadvantages. Both radial and profile
averaging techniques lead to a significant reduction in
the backscattering data. Since spectral averaging is per-
formed over some consecutive wavelengths, it leads to
increase the processing time that is unsuitable for real-
time applications. Furthermore, a considerable loss in
image resolution is occurred by pixel binning technique.
For example, a 2×2 average filter leads to 50% loss in
image resolution. These reductions in data size will
negatively affect the final results of LBI systems. It
seems that the use of other image de-noising methods,
like transform domain filtering techniques, helps in-
crease SNR with minimum effects of the above-
mentioned disadvantages (Motwani et al. 2004).
& Although Eqs. 9–12 have shown a considerable im-
provement in the prediction of qualitative indices of
products by LBI technique, trying to find newer correc-
tion methods to reform and improve these equations is
proposed.
& Literature review showed the usefulness of using classi-
cal thresholding techniques (bimodal and Otsu’s thresh-
olding) for segmentation of ROI in light backscattering
images. Bonissone et al. (1998) reported that the perfor-
mance of these approaches is greatly reduced in images
with ill-defined regions like regions far away from the
center of incident light spot in backscattering images. To
Food Bioprocess Technol (2012) 5:1465–1485
improve thresholding performance in such situations,
the utilization of fuzzy set’s models as a way to embed
the uncertainty is proposed.
& The current feature extraction methods used in light
backscattering imaging focused on fitting some mathe-
matical functions or models to the one-dimensional scat-
tering profiles then using the parameters of these
functions or models as useful features. Since LBI pro-
vides 2D images with different patterns of pixel intensity
values, extraction of texture features of images may lead
to better predict the qualitative parameters of agro-food
produce.
& Since each feature selection algorithm provides unique
set of selected features, authors recommend different
feature selection techniques be utilized in future works.
Finally, the best method should be selected by compar-
ing the performance of each feature set in estimating the
qualitative parameters of products.
& ANN is the only used soft-computing technique for
modeling in backscattering imaging to this date.
However, there are other soft-computing techniques that
can cover the main drawbacks of ANN, like its non-
interpretability and it’s prone to overfitting, when it is
used as a modeling procedure in LBI systems. A fuzzy
inference system presents a mathematical structure to
treat and comprise uncertainty in the perception of ob-
scurity, imprecision, partial reality, and lack of informa-
tion. Adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system
(ANFIS) brings the advantages of ANN, i.e., ability to
learn/train, and fuzzy logic, i.e., interpretability, and
covers the lacks of these techniques when are used
individually (Jang 1993). On the other hand, neuron
weights in ANNs can be optimized by an optimization
algorithm like GAs. Several papers reported an increase
in ANN performance when it was used in couple with
GA for the modeling of different engineering problems
(Fish et al. 2004; Zhang et al. 2010). Hence, authors
suggest utilizing artificial intelligence techniques such
as ANN and ANFIS, and GA during the process of
modeling to improve the final performance of LBI in
prediction of desired outputs.
& The main industrial application for LBI systems is its
implementation in the sorting/grading machines of agro-
food products. Low processing time per object is one of
the most important factors in the design of such
machines. Most of the techniques proposed for process-
ing of backscattering images are computationally cheap.
Considering this fact that PC-based hardware is devel-
oping fast and increasing their computational power at
low costs, it makes researches to be able to test and bring
some high computational cost algorithms to enhance the
processing process of these types of images in future
maintaining the rate of fruits per second processed in
1483
real-time sorting machines. At the present, LBI systems
are unsuitable for implementation in the continuous
sorting/grading machines because this method requires
the slow movement of the object in front of the imaging
unit during the image acquisition process. This limita-
tion comes from the imaging technology used in these
systems. With current imaging technology, LBI systems
are suitable for stop-and-go sorting/grading machines.
& The LBI technique has been tested on a limited number
of agro-food products. It is suggested that the efficiency
of this technique to be tested over a wider range of
products.
& Beside internal characteristics such as MC, SSC, and
acidity and the presence of external defect, detection of
internal defects is also important in assessing the overall
quality of fruits and vegetables. This can be a fertile field
for developing applications of LBI technique in quality
inspection of fruits and vegetal materials.
Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Prof. Renfu Lu and
Dr. Jianwei Qin for their valuable helps in providing of some docu-
ments to do a comprehensive literature review regarding this paper. We
would also like to thank Prof. Manuela Zude for proofreading this
paper as well as for her valuable comments.
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